Providing instant bank accounts through Monese

About Monese

Established in 2015, Monese is a brand new banking service that enables new UK residents to open a bank account with just a mobile phone and a passport – all within three minutes, and free of charge. Typically, lengthy credit-checks mean it can take weeks for non-patriots to open a bank account. Monese removes all the unnecessary friction.

Challenge

During the two years prior to launch, Monese experienced the painful battle of setting up a FinTech company, thanks to licensing hurdles and regulatory issues. Determined to send payments on behalf of customers all over the world, Monese faced three options:

Build its own international payments system from scratch and deal with the local technology, regulatory and compliance issues within each region

Work with Swift, which is notoriously expensive and cumbersome for smaller players dealing with lower value transactions

Work with Currencycloud for fast, streamlined access to the international payments network, thanks to Currencycloud’s scale and flexible technology

Partnership

Currencycloud’s well documented API enabled one Monese developer to easily integrate Currencycloud’s Payment Engine Two within just two hours – ideal for a small start-up, looking to scale quickly. This offered instant access to:

A flexible teamAs is often the way with starting a business, Monese made a launch plan “and then ignored it completely”. Luckily Currencycloud’s flexible technology and agile team meant this wasn’t’ an issue.

A system that works for themCurrencycloud’s Cash Manager provides Monese with the flexibility to put money into cash reserves and launch international payments at a time that suits them

Results

Launched in late 2015, Monese already has thousands of customers coming to the platform to open an account. Thanks to Currencycloud, these customers are given access to smooth, streamlined international payments at the click of a button.

Working with Currencycloud, Monese is able to process international payments smoothly and at speed. Moreover, with costs 8-10X lower than working with a bank, Monese is able to pass these savings on directly to customers and charge them “the bare minimum” for international payments.

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Launching our own FinTech company, we always knew we would face challenges. Thanks to Currencycloud, we were able to avoid additional regulatory or technology hurdles, by relying on its ready-established, compliant platform. The Currencycloud team has been there and done it – they get the start-up mentality and made the whole launch process easier for us by adapting to our timelines and requirements.